Posted
by
samzenpus
on Sunday April 28, 2013 @05:16PM
from the a-planet-by-any-other-name dept.

SchrodingerZ writes "The nearest planet outside our solar system has recently been named Albertus Alauda. Originally named Alpha Centauri Bb, the planet is the closest known planet not orbiting the Sun, being a mere 4.3 light years away. The name comes from Jay Lark, who won the naming contest held by Uwingu starting last month and ending on April 22. Lark remarks that the name comes from the Latin name of his late grandfather, stating, "My grandfather passed away after a lengthy and valiant battle with cancer; his name in Latin means noble or bright and to praise or extol." The competition for naming the planet came from Uwing, a company which used the buying of name proposals and votes to fund grants for future space exploration ventures. Albertus Alauda won the competition with 751 votes, followed by Rakhat with 684 votes, and Caleo, with 622 votes."

It's odd to find this here just two days after I discovered that for the low, low price of $5.99 GOG would allow me to once again effortlessly lose track of an entire weekend. I had forgotten how great that game was.

I'm not sure what to be more surprised about, that 751 suckers paid money to vote on a meaningless name competition, or that slashdot got duped into publishing it as if anyone other than Uwing will actually use the name.

This is just another variant on those "name a star after your mom" scams.

Before joining in the beating maybe you should actually check who is involved. I think these people know the issues about the naming of astronomical bodies...

Dr. Alan Stern. Alan is an aerospace consultant and an Associate Vice President at the Southwest Research Institute, a large non-profit R&D institution with over 3400 employees, and operates a successful private aerospace consulting practice. Formerly, he directed all science program and missions at NASA.

Aerospace consultant? Did the shipbuilders also get to name the discoveries of explorers? But I highly doubt he was even involved in building the HARPS instrument or the ESO 3.6m Telescope. So it would be like some random ship builder in England naming Hispaniola "Some bloke's passed away granddad's place" after doing a contest about it and expect it to be accepted. What these Uwingu guys are doing is disrespectful for the discoverers, the IAU and the granddad. I wouldn't like it if people attached my name

Correct.Anybody can claim to be running a contest to name anything, legality not withstanding, however, only the body/organization that is internationally recognized as the valid naming registrar can actually place or change names. In this case, it's the IAU (International Astronomical Union).Uwing claims they didn't say they were sanctioned to do so by IAU, but then again, they didn't say they weren't, and most people will assume that you had obtained permission to do something you are taking money for unless you say otherwise. To not point out that it is an unofficial name choosing, is the first sign of a scam.

Another thing, if you see anyone wanting money for ANYTHING not within the confines of the Earths Troposphere, it's about 99.999% probably it's a scam. You won't get any property, rights, or official naming of anything. There are international treaties that cover a lot of this stuff, and one of the first rules in that whole thing is if you don't have people their, you definitely have no rights to sell it, period. (Even if you do have people there, you still have lots of limits on what you can do.)

By the way, horrible name choice in my opinion. Nice to honor your grandfather, but still, that name sucks.

This is no different than people who sell parcels of land on the Moon or Mars, or name stars with a "Star Registry registered with the U.S. Copyright Office" (aka they put the book together and "registered" a "copyright" on the list of names with the Library of Congress... something that costs about $50 and doesn't mean a damn thing other than you can't publish those names elsewhere without permission).

I should note there are geographical naming boards like the IAU who work with terrestrial landmarks as wel

and one of the first rules in that whole thing is if you don't have people their, you definitely have no rights to sell it, period. (Even if you do have people there, you still have lots of limits on what you can do.)

To be exact, the treaty says you don't own it at all even if you live there.

If you are talking about the Outer Space Treaty, all it says is that it can't be claimed by a sovereign entity (actually, just the signature countries of the treaty) for national appropriation or territorial claim. Real estate can be claimed by private individuals though.... or at least that is real murky if anybody can actually claim extra-terrestrial real estate. Then again, ownership at the point of a gun is likely going to be recognized regardless of whatever some stupid treaty may or may not claim.

Maybe an American will finally discover an actual planet one day. Everyone else already has.

Everyone? You can't really count the visible planets, or if you do, then every American is descended from an ethnic group that "discovered" them. As to the Extra Saturnian Planets, Uranus was discovered by an Englishman, and Neptune's discovery was the collaborative result of two Frenchmen, an actual telespcope guy and a mathematician who gave out the clues of where to look. That's hardly everyone.

Pluto's demotion was the result of the fact that up to now, the only definition of "planet" was the non-

To quite honest, and speaking as a working professional astronomer, the IAU itself is a bit of scam. It has no actual authority, no actual acountability, and no real sway on science. It's more a bunch of astronomers who should have been lawyers and who occasionally meet and pretend they are important. Oh and they charge an arm and leg for membership, which is why the vast majority of astronomers are not members.

In reality astronomy doesn't really need an "international authority". The sky is the sky and observations are almost always reproducible. If someone doesn't believe you, they can go and observe it themselves. That's called the scientific method. It does not need nor is enhanced by lawyers-cum-astronomers.

The recognized standards body is the International Astronomical Union and their policy is [iau.org]:

ExoplanetsIn 2009, the Organizing Committee of IAU Commission 53 Extrasolar Planets (WGESP) on exoplanets discussed the possibility of giving popular names to exoplanets in addition to their existing catalogue designation (for instance HD 85512 b). Although no consensus was reached, the majority was not in favour of this possibility at the time.

However, considering the ever increasing interest of the general public in being involved in the discovery and understanding of the Universe, the IAU decided in 2013 to restart the discussion of the naming procedure for exoplanets and assess the need to have popular names as well. In 2013 the members of Commission 53 will be consulted in this respect and the result of this will be made public on this page.

This is just a company click-baiting by holding naming contests, they have no official standing whatsoever. Is this more dice.com crap?

If the IAU can't get off their collective asses and start doing their job properly, then they'll soon find themselves outvoted by the likes of Uwingu who are going to do it for them. The IAU only has the position it has because they did a good job of gaining consensus until recently with the whole Pluto fiasco. And if you don't think that was a fiasco, then you don't know enough about it. If they screw up exoplanet naming, then people are going to start looking to someone else or just ignore the IAU. No

Get off their collective asses? What's the urgency? Are the names of these exoplanets going to have any significance to *anybody* other than astronomers anytime soon? For values of "soon" that could measure in centuries. It's not as if somebody's desperately waiting on this information so they can put out bus timetables.

I don't think it was a fiasco at all. Keep in mind that having 9 planets is out of question.For starters, you'd have a hard time arguing that Pluto is a planet while Ceres isn't.

Either we designate Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, Eris (notably bigger and more massive than Pluto) and possibly Orcus, Quaoar, OR and Sedna as planets... or we stay with Mercury up to Neptune.There's a clear orbital distinction between the first 8 and the other 9+, so it really makes sense to group them in two categories, especially since we aren't sure at all that we have found all dwarf planets yet.

Higher mass, yes. Bigger, no. Eris and Pluto are almost exactly the same size, and it's up in the air which one is actually a tiny bit bigger. Eris is most certainly not "notably bigger".The mass of the Eris and Pluto systems are also close enough that "notably" shouldn't be used.

But what makes Eris less of a planet candidate than Pluto is that Eris' orbit is way way more eccentric than Pluto's. Yes, Pluto moves at an angle to the ecliptic, and in an elliptic orbit too, but not nearly to the same degree

At least Pluto is in lockstep with Neptune, and thus clearly belong in the solar system. Eris moves almost twice the distance away from Neptune, at a 45 degree angle to the ecliptic (more than twice that of Pluto). That's not what I'd think of as planetary motion.

As I understand it, being in "lockstep" with another planet is not part of the scientific definition of planethood. If it were, then we'd have some problems. Anything that orbits the Sun is by definition, a "proper member of the solar system." The thing here is about differentiating all these "proper" members into more useful divisions. Neither Pluto, nor Eris have cleared out the areas bordering their orbits. While they are circular bodies, numbers alone have demonstrated that that by itself woul

As I understand it, being in "lockstep" with another planet is not part of the scientific definition of planethood. If it were, then we'd have some problems.

No, but having an orbit that's been stable for and will continue to be stable for millions of years is a good start. Neptune won't suddenly pull Pluto out of its orbit, because their orbits are synchronized at a 2:3 rate. It's less clear how long-term stable Eris' orbit is.

Neither Pluto, nor Eris have cleared out the areas bordering their orbits.

Neither has Mars. Jupiter and Tellus keep Mars' orbit relatively clean, which it's too small to do itself, but there's still enough debris in its orbit that it occasionally runs into it (which Phobos and Deimos prove). The definition

The recognized standards body is the International Astronomical Union and their policy is [iau.org]:

Exoplanets
In 2009, the Organizing Committee of IAU Commission 53 Extrasolar Planets (WGESP) on exoplanets discussed the possibility of giving popular names to exoplanets in addition to their existing catalogue designation (for instance HD 85512 b). Although no consensus was reached, the majority was not in favour of this possibility at the time.

However, considering the ever increasing interest of the general public in being involved in the discovery and understanding of the Universe, the IAU decided in 2013 to restart the discussion of the naming procedure for exoplanets and assess the need to have popular names as well. In 2013 the members of Commission 53 will be consulted in this respect and the result of this will be made public on this page.

This is just a company click-baiting by holding naming contests, they have no official standing whatsoever. Is this more dice.com crap?

Was this started by the public wish of one of the discoverers of remote ice dwarfs beyond Pluto to have his discovery named Xena?

Damn he won the contest. As a former member of a team that discovered planets using gravitational microlensing I always wanted to get the chance to name a planet "Koozebane", which is the planet many muppet aliens (supposedly) come from. Instead they got named boring things like "MACHO-98-BLG-35". Lucky guy to name the planet.

This is precisely why I want scientists naming planets according to an accepted method of taxonomy. Koozebane? Seriously? Because muppets? I like the muppets as much as the next man but come on - a heavenly object stuck with a ridiculous name like that forever just because some guy thought it would be funny? Ugh no.

Fair enough, but there is no accepted taxonomy for planets. In the case of the gravitational microlensing planetary events it is an accident of project, year and event within the year. In short, arbitrary and meaningless. Then we can take plenty of the traditional star names out there, eg. "Algol" from Arabic Al Gol "The ghoul" or "winking demon" from its variable nature. That is no less ridiculous than Koozebane, and less funny.

This is precisely why I want scientists naming planets according to an accepted method of taxonomy. Koozebane? Seriously? Because muppets? I like the muppets as much as the next man but come on - a heavenly object stuck with a ridiculous name like that forever just because some guy thought it would be funny? Ugh no.

Then you had better not look at the names of asteroids... some of them are pretty whimsical. "19383 Rolling Stones" is just an example.

The intersteller transport to the nearby colony planet of Godaddy.com will depart shortly. There will be a brief layover on the forest moon of Playtex Gentle Glide. I remind you again that exporting any sentient vegetation from the planet Monsanto is strictly forbidden.

Not about what is true, about what things are named. Scientific truth is objective, names are not. Is it "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" or "North Korea?" "Denali" or "Mount McKinley?" "Strategic Defense Initiative" or "Star Wars?" "Gravina Island Bridge" or "Bridge to Nowhere?"

The moral of the story is that a thing is called what people want to call it. Even if your name is the "official" one, it doesn't matter much if everybody else calls it something else.

I have no mod points laying around, but I'd mod parent up. Just because space.com picks up a story doesn't make it newsworthy. What's next? Dig up some story about how you can plots of land on the Moon?

Anybody want to buy an Asteroid? I'm giving a $25,000 discount to the first 10 buyers!

um. no. some dotcom doesn't get to sell naming rights to planets. and some dude doesn't get to immortalize his papa because he can fill in an online form. gramps may have been awesome, but he doesn't get the nearest extra-solar planet named after him...

Wouldn't the obvious choice be Zephram? After all, he was from Alpha Centuri before he was from Montana.

He was always born on Earth, regardless of time-line. When TOS referred to him as "Zefram Cochrane from Alpha Centauri" they were referring to the location where he eventually settled. As the inventor of Warp Drive, there's no way any humans could have gotten to Alpha Centauri before Cochrane was born.

Let's focus our First Contact continuity complaints on the Borg Queen. What a horrible idea that was...

In the original episode "Metamorphosis", it wasn't clear where Cochrane was originally from. He could have been a humanoid native of a planet in the the Alpha Centauri system (at the time I thought "Zefram Cochrane" was a sufficiently exotic name that he could have been non-human). Or, more likely, he could have been born in a colony established by sublight ships; we know from "Space Seed" that there were sublight sleeper ships before the invention of warp drive.

(at the time I thought "Zefram Cochrane" was a sufficiently exotic name that he could have been non-human)

I was going to point out how this doesn't make any sense, when I was suddenly reminded almost every alien in TOS looked exactly like a human. Including Klingons, which looked like bearded humans. It's been too long, I think it's time for me to rewatch those episodes.

we know from "Space Seed" that there were sublight sleeper ships before the invention of warp drive.

Like I said, it's been a while, but I could have sworn Spock said the DY-100 class of ships was meant for traveling within the Solar System, and that the cryogenic chambers were meant to keep humans alive for months, not centuries. I always f

As per the Star Fleet Technical Manual era books, the Terrans reached Alpha Centuri via a 50 year trip on a sleeper ship, and discovered that the Preservers had made a colony of North Africans (Carthaginians by culture), and Western Med Greek coloni and Celts. Zephram Cochrane was a local mathematician that postulated a space warp without the technology to build it, which the Terrans had. Construction of the return ship was so fast that it preceded the report that they were going to build one and return t

"the International Astronomical Union issued a press release stressing its authority as the sole arbiter of the exoplanet-naming process"

While this of course is at best a PR/Fundraising scheme, and at worst a scam, I don't particularly have much respect for the IAU either. Some of their past decisions are less about science, and more about politics. They CONSIDER themselves the "official" naming organization but in the annals of history I don't think their decisions are going to mean a hole lot.

Until and unless the IAU gives some authority to Uwingu, they have none. IAU says it's still AlphaCent-Bb.

Lark remarks that the name comes from the Latin name of his late grandfather, stating

And with an etymological justification like that... it's going to remain Alpha Centauri-Bb for quite a while yet.

All very fine and good for the guy to attempt to remember his grandfather, but to name a whole planet for him? Hubris! If he'd restrained his etymology to "bright", then he'd have had a much better chance o

What gives this particular company any legitimate right to name planets? I say that the first one to land on it should get naming rights. That'll show whether they're serious about sponsoring space exploration, or are just ripping off feeble-minded individuals who think they also own a piece of the Moon and a star named after their cat.

No, it was blown up by Young Darth Vader in an odd shaped Death Star. The names were changed to protect the innocent. That was just a practice round to prove to Disney that the director was capable of making Star-Wars movies.

Einstein sort of took care of that. Mercury is deep enough in the Sun's gravity well that the Newtonian discrepancies which would support the existence of Vulcan are explained away by the curvature of space-time.

You do realize that 99.999% of the people in the universe will have no idea what you're talking about... right? That of course would completely defeat the purpose of the naming scheme, don't you think?

Eris is 27% more massive than Pluto. [wikipedia.org] You can have Pluto as a Planet if you're willing to agree humans are all blind as bats because they didn't see THE OTHER PLANET that was hovering about your star, even after all those centuries looking, you only just spotted it 8 years ago...

Or, you can just de-list Pluto and save some of your pathetic face, human. Hell, you wouldn't even raise an eyebrow if there were thousands of colony ships just sitting right in your back yard, gravitationally maneuvering a small

You had your chance: You made it to the closest easiest target, but then parked your waste-holes for over 40 stellar orbits. Had you shown promise, been prodigiously diligent or at least sensible enough to expend the small cultural effort to develop the tech to colonize beyond your planet's safe magnetosphere then maybe things would have worked out differently for you... The Universe has neither love nor sympathy for lazy complacent races such as yours.

"Cold, dead hands" -- Ha! They might as well be for all the good you've done with them.

Actually the Universe has neither love nor sympathy for anyone, whether lazy, or competent. Sometimes extremely fit species are laid low, and extremely silly ones are preserved through nothing more significant than blind luck.